The Obama Bargain - from WSJ

[Driven1]

The Obama Bargain
By SHELBY STEELE
March 18, 2008; Page A23

Geraldine Ferraro may have had sinister motives when she said that Barack Obama would not be "in his position" as a frontrunner but for his race. Possibly she was acting as Hillary Clinton's surrogate. Or maybe she was simply befuddled by this new reality -- in which blackness could constitute a political advantage.


AP 
Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, June 4, 2007.
But whatever her motives, she was right: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." Barack Obama is, of course, a very talented politician with a first-rate political organization at his back. But it does not detract from his merit to say that his race is also a large part of his prominence. And it is undeniable that something extremely powerful in the body politic, a force quite apart from the man himself, has pulled Obama forward. This force is about race and nothing else.

The novelty of Barack Obama is more his cross-racial appeal than his talent. Jesse Jackson displayed considerable political talent in his presidential runs back in the 1980s. But there was a distinct limit to his white support. Mr. Obama's broad appeal to whites makes him the first plausible black presidential candidate in American history. And it was Mr. Obama's genius to understand this. Though he likes to claim that his race was a liability to be overcome, he also surely knew that his race could give him just the edge he needed -- an edge that would never be available to a white, not even a white woman.

How to turn one's blackness to advantage?

The answer is that one "bargains." Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America's history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer's race against him. And whites love this bargain -- and feel affection for the bargainer -- because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence.

This is how Mr. Obama has turned his blackness into his great political advantage, and also into a kind of personal charisma. Bargainers are conduits of white innocence, and they are as popular as the need for white innocence is strong. Mr. Obama's extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence.

His actual policy positions are little more than Democratic Party boilerplate and hardly a tick different from Hillary's positions. He espouses no galvanizing political idea. He is unable to say what he means by "change" or "hope" or "the future." And he has failed to say how he would actually be a "unifier." By the evidence of his slight political record (130 "present" votes in the Illinois state legislature, little achievement in the U.S. Senate) Barack Obama stacks up as something of a mediocrity. None of this matters much.

Race helps Mr. Obama in another way -- it lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits and education reform. His dark skin, with its powerful evocations of America's tortured racial past, frames the political contest as a morality play. Will his victory mean America's redemption from its racist past? Will his defeat show an America morally unevolved? Is his campaign a story of black overcoming, an echo of the civil rights movement? Or is it a passing-of-the-torch story, of one generation displacing another?

Because he is black, there is a sense that profound questions stand to be resolved in the unfolding of his political destiny. And, as the Clintons have discovered, it is hard in the real world to run against a candidate of destiny. For many Americans -- black and white -- Barack Obama is simply too good (and too rare) an opportunity to pass up. For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers. And for blacks, here is the chance to document the end of inferiority. So the Clintons have found themselves running more against America's very highest possibilities than against a man. And the press, normally happy to dispel every political pretension, has all but quivered before Mr. Obama. They, too, have feared being on the wrong side of destiny.

And yet, in the end, Barack Obama's candidacy is not qualitatively different from Al Sharpton's or Jesse Jackson's. Like these more irascible of his forbearers, Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson were "challengers," not bargainers. They intimidated whites and demanded, in the name of historical justice, that they be brought forward. Mr. Obama flatters whites, grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude. Two sides of the same coin.

But bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don't know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.) Mr. Obama has said of himself, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views . . ." And so, human visibility is Mr. Obama's Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a "blank screen."

Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama's political aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday -- for 20 years -- in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable. His pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a challenger who goes far past Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in his anti-American outrage ("God damn America").

How does one "transcend" race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?

What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn't this hatred more rhetorical than real?

But now the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.

No matter his ultimate political fate, there is already enough pathos in Barack Obama to make him a cautionary tale. His public persona thrives on a manipulation of whites (bargaining), and his private sense of racial identity demands both self-betrayal and duplicity. His is the story of a man who flew so high, yet neglected to become himself.

Mr. Steele, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win" (Free Press, 2007).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120579535818243439.html?mod=djempersonal

[second_pancake]

Interesting.  While there are some valid points there, I can't help but feel more than a little uneasy at the idea that there are still so many people in the world that see a person's color as some way of identifying the person.

[thelakelander]

I disagree with the notion that him being black is an advantage.  Its just as much as a curse, as it is a positive.  For every person that will give him an extra look because of skin color, there's one or two that will turn him off because of the same exact thing.  This argument sounds more like an excuse to explain why his campaign has turned out better than originally expected to this point and only takes us away from learning how he and the other's propose to carry out their plans.

[copperfiend]

The term "Anti-American" is used far too liberally by people these days.

[downtownparks]

I actually sorta get what she was saying. Obama represents a first in America. We have a black candidate who is a populist, doesn't seem to kowtow to any group (Except the far left) and is palatable to a much larger group of people than just black voters (Ala Jesse Jackson in 88)... for example, would Corrine Brown win in any district other than a predominantly black district, even if it were still predominantly democratic?

I think what you are seeing is the natural progression of white guilt in many ways. younger white people are jumping at a chance to prove how un-racist they are, and Obama represents that chance. Hey eveyone look at me, Im not a racist because I voted for Obama.

That said, I think most thinking adults realize who you vote for doesnt dictate if you are a racist or not. But I understand what she was saying, and in fact, the very fact she CANT say it without being jumped on very much proves her point.

While I am not enamored with his politics, I very much like Obama. He is charismatic, he is moving, and he seems to be willing to talk about the very difficult issue of race in the country. Its a conversation we need to have as a nation, and who better to lead it than a black president.

[thelakelander]

Could it be that much of America is not impressed by the other two candidates?  I know that's the camp I fall in.  I feel I know what I'll get with McCain (more of the same), Clinton has been proven to flop in the direction of wind blowing and Obama promotes change.  Now I'm waiting to see if there is any substance behind "change" and how he expects to pull "change" off.

Neverthess, I think while what has been said in the article has some truth to it, Obama also mobilizes the ultra conservatives to band together in the same light (just watch FOX News), which is why I believe race is as much as a curse as it is a blessing.

[copperfiend]

Could it be that much of America is not impressed by the other two candidates?  I know that's the camp I fall in.  I feel I know what I'll get with McCain (more of the same), Clinton has been proven to flop in the direction of wind blowing and Obama promotes change.  Now I'm waiting to see if there is any substance behind "change" and how he expects to pull "change" off.

Neverthess, I think while what has been said in the article has some truth to it, Obama also mobilizes the ultra conservatives to band together in the same light (just watch FOX News), which is why I believe race is as much as a curse as it is a blessing.

Fox News and the ultra conservatives would band together to sling mud at whomever was the Democratic nominee. There have a swiftboat for everybody.

[Lunican]

Apparently Obama's speech was self written.

Having a president that can read and write would be pretty cool.

[copperfiend]

Apparently Obama's speech was self written.

Having a president that can read and write would be pretty cool.

I am pretty sure Cheney can do both.

[RiversideGator]

FYI:  Shelby Steele is a black man.

The whole notion that electing a black person who is a far left ideologue in disguise will somehow bring America together is ridiculous.  There will always be divisions between right and left.  These exist all around the world in homogeneous countries and heterogeneous ones.  And, Obama has shown absolutely no talent for unity once he gets elected.  Do not fall for the smoke and mirrors.  His whole campaign is a sham.

[RiversideGator]

Apparently Obama's speech was self written.

Having a president that can read and write would be pretty cool.

I am pretty sure you need to be able to read and write to obtain degrees from Yale and Harvard, no matter the family connections.  Do you have degrees from Yale and Harvard, Lunican.

Oh and BTW, dont believe the Obama propaganda that he wrote it himself.  This was no doubt penned at least in part by David Axelrod, Obama's far left strategist and handler.

[second_pancake]

FYI:  Shelby Steele is a black man.

The whole notion that electing a black person who is a far left ideologue in disguise will somehow bring America together is ridiculous.  There will always be divisions between right and left.  These exist all around the world in homogeneous countries and heterogeneous ones.  And, Obama has shown absolutely no talent for unity once he gets elected.  Do not fall for the smoke and mirrors.  His whole campaign is a sham.

It's not just Obama, it's anyone who has ever run for a elected office.  That's the very definition of politics.  It's a sales strategy, except you sell yourself instead of the next cheap gadget you can make with slave labor.

Politicians will say and do anything to get the votes they need, overpromising and under-delivering in the process.  NONE of them can be trusted.  The real change happens with the average people of this country, the ones that have skin in the game.  We're the ones that make or break our society, not some figure-head sitting in his/her ivory palace.

[Lunican]

Well RG, maybe Bush should have hired David Axelrod to write his speeches.

I'm not promising to vote for Obama, but a president that isn't a total embarrassment at the microphone would be a good change. Maybe that's what Obama means when he speaks of 'change'?

[thelakelander]

FYI:  Shelby Steele is a black man.

The whole notion that electing a black person who is a far left ideologue in disguise will somehow bring America together is ridiculous.  There will always be divisions between right and left.  These exist all around the world in homogeneous countries and heterogeneous ones.  And, Obama has shown absolutely no talent for unity once he gets elected.  Do not fall for the smoke and mirrors.  His whole campaign is a sham.

I'm concerned that neither Obama, McCain nor Clinton have presented a plan of any substance up to this point.  I hear the promises, but no steps in how to get from Point A to Point B.  Although, after hearing the guy speak, I can see why ultra conservatives are so concerned about him.  He'd rip McCain to shreads in a head to head battle of campaigns with no substance.  The best thing for them would be for yahoo Wright to take him down, making Clinton McCain's opponent.

[Lunican]

He'd rip McCain to shreads in a head to head battle of campaigns with no substance.  The best thing for them would be for yahoo Wright to take him down, making Clinton McCain's opponent.

This is why RG and Ann Coulter are rooting for Hilary.